A Freelance Gig That Felt Like a True Crime Podcast
Okay, so I do freelance sound editing on the side, mostly for podcasts and indie documentaries. Last year, I got a referral for a new client who wanted me to clean up and enhance some old audio interviews. Sounded straightforward, right?
The files were a mess hiss, room tone, the works. But the content was what got me. It was this series of interviews with former employees of a now-defunct wellness retreat, and the stories they were telling were seriously unsettling. Missing funds, a founder who vanished overnight, and these weird, coerced “confessionals” they recorded. The person who hired me was super vague, just saying it was for “personal archival.” The whole vibe was less “documentary research” and more “someone is piecing together evidence.”
I finished the job, sent the files, and never heard from them again. No feedback, nothing. It’s been living in my head rent-free ever since. Has anyone else taken on a project that left you with more questions than answers? How do you shake off that creeping feeling you might have accidentally helped someone’s amateur investigation?